A farewell to the King of Pop

"We will all remember where we were when we heard that Michael Jackson died."

The king is dead. Long live the king. The death of Michael Jackson sees a farewell to one of pop’s most charismatic and enigmatic figures, writes Paul Taylor.

THERE are here-today, gone-tomorrow pop stars. And then there are the few shaman-like figures who seem bigger than the world of entertainment, stranger than the rest of the human race and able to command a near- religious fervour.

It is a truism to say that we will all remember where we were when we heard that Michael Jackson died.

Why? Because even those of us who are not fans are still enthralled by the King of Pop - the genius of the songwriting, the fluidity of his movement, the fantasy world with which he surrounded himself and the lingering suspicion that there may have been a darkness behind the bright veneer of Jackson's Neverland ranch with its rollercoaster and fairground rides.

The death of Michael Jackson at the relatively young age of 50 is one of the huge landmarks of the rock `n' roll years, up there with the assassination of John Lennon and the passing of Elvis Presley.

As for his place in the pop pantheon, Jackson was the black Elvis. It was about more than good songs, well sung. He moved in a way no performer had moved before. His music was a cunning synthesis of black and white styles. He led where others followed,

Like Elvis, Jackson's stage persona was so readily recognisable that it could be conjured by a single gesture, a single vocal inflection - a tribute artist's dream.

And like Elvis, the fans' blinkered devotion is such that, almost certainly, some will refuse to believe their hero is dead.

When we look back over Jackson's life, we see first a tiny, big-voiced boy from Gary, Indiana, fronting a band of his brothers at an age when he should have been playing out on his skateboard.

Songs like I Want You Back and ABC tripped off the Motown production line and into pop history, cementing The Jackson 5's reputation and making a huge star of Michael by the time he was 11.

Fast forward to 1982 and the little boy was now lean, gel-haired and athletic, plying Thriller, an album which did not just prove to be the best-selling of all time - over 57m and counting - but a watershed in pop's development.

The 14-minute Thriller video was a universally talked-about TV event, with director John Landis's zombie extravaganza redefining how pop should be presented.

If subsequent albums such as Bad, in 1987, Dangerous, in 1991, and HIStory, in 1995, sold less well than Thriller, Jackson remained a commercial giant, the brittle beats and yelping vocals utterly inimitable.

But, increasingly, the world came to know him as a damaged man, admitting, in that pained whisper of his, that he had missed out on a childhood.

Little wonder that he sought out other stars, such as film legends Elizabeth Taylor, Liza Minnelli and Brooke Shields, who had endured the same fame-blighted upbringing.

We heard of his friendship with a chimp, Bubbles, his nights spent sleeping in an oxygen chamber, the Peter Pan-like theme park to childishness which he erected around himself at Neverland in California. But most gruesomely fascinating of all was the changing face of Michael Jackson, his ever-more pointed nose and sculpted chin, the lightening of his skin which Jackson explained as a skin pigment disorder, but critics interpreted as an attempt to escape even his racial identity.

Here, we all thought, was self-loathing etched in one of the world's most famous faces.

By the time of the HIStory album, Jackson seemed too disconnected from the world. The grandiloquent sentiments of pieces like Earth Song simply didn't ring true.

When British pop star Jarvis Cocker invaded the stage as Jackson performed at the Brit Awards in 1996, he justified it by saying that Jackson - now more often dubbed Wacko Jacko - saw himself as a "Christ-like figure".

At the same time, accusations of child abuse had been emerging since 1993, culminating in a trial in 2005 in which a poorly-looking Jackson was acquitted of 10 charges.

After that, Jackson seemed an ever-more haunted figure, with reports of financial difficulties, and glimpses of him sheltering beneath a parasol with his three oddly-masked children.

In a monumental miscalculation, Jackson co-operated with a TV documentary by Martin Bashir in 2003, its lingering impression being that of a lonely man who filled his slightly macabre fantasy world with other people's children.

Jackson's musical legacy is immense, and it will more than stand up to the reappraisal his death will bring. But the tale of the little boy who only felt at home on stage, and spent his adult life trying to recapture his lost childhood, will stand as a cautionary tale in a fame-obsessed age.

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THERE are here-today, gone-tomorrow pop stars. And then there are the few shaman-like figures who seem bigger than the world of entertainment, stranger than the rest of the human race and able to command a near-religious fervour. It is a truism to say that we will all remember where we were when we heard that Michael Jackson died. Why?

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THERE are here-today, gone-tomorrow pop stars. And then there are the few shaman-like figures who seem bigger than the world of entertainment, stranger than the rest of the human race and able to command a near-religious fervour. It is a truism to say that we will all remember where we were when we heard that Michael Jackson died. Why?

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